Agent Death

[Sialia]

So, the other night, we're doing the big raid on the ghoulish drug lord's party in our Delta Green campaign.

I'm on a team of six "firefighters" and our job is to come in from the roof, and work our way down to where the ghoul party is being busted up by the troops on the first floor, making sure that nobody escapes upward, and generally ensuring that the entire building successfully goes up in flames destroying the evidence of the evening's activites.

The team leader has gone down the first flight of steps, screamed horribly a few times and then shut up. The second guy approached the stairwell and was riddled with machine gun fire. I suggested shoving some burning furniture down the stairwell on top of our assailants, (and uh, our wounded guy, who wasn't long for this world anyway) and suddenly, I'm team leader. Go fig.

So next, we get ordered to go down and secure that floor.

Bearing in mind that we're carrying fire fighting equipment, and nothing explosive like munitions, because we're trying not to blow ourselves to hell in this little act of arson. The other teams are in charge of starting the fire--we're just making sure it goes in the right direction.

So, eventually, we make our way downstairs, and all seems to be quiet on the second floor, at least, as compared to the sounds of people dying horribly on the first floor and ghouls snickering over our command channel.

I look around, all paranoid, even remembering to look up and check the ceiling for possible enemies. Mythago, our Keeper, laughs at me, and tells me all is quiet. But I know they're around here somewhere.

So, getting desperate, I say "Is there any sign that the ghouls were ever here?" I'm thinking, maybe a tracking check . . . ?

And she looks over at Swack Iron and says "I don't even really need to show up for these, do I? Things just sort of run themselves from here."

"So a SAN check would be in order?" Swack-Iron says.

"What about the two guys who came down before us?" I say, frantically trying to figure out what's so funny. "Where's what's left of them?"

"You're standing in them," she says.

 

[Unseelie]

It was a good session... I'm still stuck on the whole idea that the undead are saying 'Bran', not 'Brains'...

 

[J'quan]

As the one member of the team that died, I must say it was a fun session... watching the NRO-Seal team enact a plan that a 6 year old could see the failings in was priceless. Of course, that's why "that team was chosen."

Now, to just figure out what I'm doing in this body...

 

[Unseelie]

"So, you died?"

"And came back!"

</grossepointeblank>

 

[mythago]

To be fair, the stupidity of the plan was only from the point of view of the SEALs who went in first--that is, it was stupid if the plan was purely to eliminate the ghoul targets.

If your plan was to spread terror and to weed out a bunch of your lesser squad members, on the other hand, it went beautifully.

Now to run off giggling at the idea of a shambling, rotting zombie bellowing "Bran...braaaaan...."

 

[Sialia]

Ok, let's clarify here: the f8cking scary undead we met last night were NOT actually walking around moaning "Braaaaannnn!"

There were, as I recall, too busy ripping the crud out of a large number of heavily armored and armed steroid enhanced miltary boys.

Before the assualt, we were chatting nervously about what was likely to happen, or not happen during the assault. Somebody brought up the subject of stupid things that mobs (monsters) drop in games like Dark Age of Camelot.

Mythago mentioned that undead filidhs drop, of all things,
muffins.

It suddenly dawned on us that therefore, zombies don't
walk around saying "Braaaaains"--what they actually want is "Braaaaan!"

Various witty comments were suppressed on the subject of what a diet of corpses does for one's regularity.

It may not seem terribly funny to those of you sitting in your nice warm cubicles wasting your bosses money reading this, but to a group of stressed out Agents (and the one remaining Friendly) who were pretty sure they were going to have to all die heroically in the next few rounds, it was hysterical.

Then one of the boys from downstairs poked his head up the stairwell and looked at Team Phoenix and said, "Get down here! We need help!" and I knew right away that the helmeted head was probably a ghoul with a swiped hat and not a real soldier, 'cause I was pretty sure most of our soldiers downstairs were dead already. And while I was trying to decide what to do about that, I almost didn't see the small cylinder rolling toward my feet.

With no pin in it.


So, I'm standing there in a mosty empty wooden building with no cover but my team mates, and I've used two of those already.

Without thinking too much about it, I bring my fire axe around in a golf swing.

The grenade shoots through a window and explodes in mid air above the street, spraying napalm all over the outside of the building.

So much for our attempt to keep the whole raid quiet.

The leader of our troops tries to warn his boys that the building is now seriously on fire.

The head Ghoul comments back over the radio "Thanks for the warning."

We realize that the Ghouls pretty much have thier situation under control on the first floor, and the NRO commander orders his boys to withdraw.

And then he orders two of his perimeter teams to kill everything that comes out of the building.

Which they do.

Then he orders Team Phoenix to withdraw as well.

Having a fine acoustic advantage to comprehend what just happened to the downstairs team, we are reluctant to head streetside. We go up, and manage to retreat out a third story window without getting nailed by friendly fire.

But also without having managed to do squat to the Ghouls below us, or determine anything about where they are or how many are left.

We estimate we've got ten minutes left before the media and emergency crews arrive and the whole action has to be wrapped up. It'll take at least fifteen to twenty before the building collapses enough to seriously bother the heavily armored, machine gun-wielding, spellcasting ghouls below.

Odds are, if the head ghoul escapes, our problems will be much, much worse than they were before we began the raid . . . and those problems were bad enough to make us want to do this idiotic thing in the first place.

And then, and then . . . someone had an idea . . . one of you guys want to take it from here?

(uh, that would be "guys" in the non-gender specific sense)

 

[Unseelie]

It was one of those moments where the player has a great idea, but the character's a hell of a lot less likely to think of it. Mechanics wise, CoC allows for this with an Idea roll.

Anyhow Joseph (J'quan's character), and myself are trying to make sure that there's a clear exit for Sialia's team of firefighters.

The NRO boys have a chopper incoming to evac Raptor Leader (and I suspect ONLY him), when the psycho ghoul leader starts taking shots with a rocket launcher at the chopper.

I can't remember if this before or after Raptor Leader takes a rocket in the face. Either way, Alex takes control of the operation.

Yup, a DG agent in control of a NRO-Delta op... hey, some of them lived once we were in charge.

Things are getting noisy, time is running out, and we've all realized that if we don't get Nassan, things are going to be much, much worse in the future.

I look over at Joseph, light over my head, and tell him "There's something we can do. Your amulet... take it off."

Backstory: Joseph was having nightmares for some time, being our 'weird stuff' guy. He had some connections with Club Apocalypse, and asked them for help. They gave him an amulet which hides him in the Dreamlands. He was also warned later, not to take it off, as now he's really juicy and interesting to those that can see in the dreamlands... like ghouls.

Joseph takes the amulet off, wrapping it around his wrist and braces as Nassan bursts through the wall. Burning wood and glass explode out of the building as Nassan leaps at Joseph.

The NRO Delta guys, who have been ordered to kill anything coming out of the building all swing their assault rifles towards Nassan and open fire, tracking him through the air as he flies towards Joseph.

Exactly, towards Joseph...

Joseph and Nassan are both riddled with bullets, and as Joseph falls he pulls the trigger of his shotgun, blowing a large burning hole in Nassan.

I'm watching all of this... (as is Miranda and the firefighters) never had a chance to react. I check Joseph... dead.

As I'm about to put another round in Nassan's corpse for good measure, one of the firefighters comes over and 'tsks' me. He takes off his helmet and gloves and says "I believe that this one has something that belongs to me, and so does this one."

He takes Joseph's amulet, and the book off of Nassan's body. Finally he offers me a cig, and walks off. I realize this little man must be Stephen Altzis (sorry, not sure how it's spelled).

I say over the command channel "Target eliminated, he doesn't have the book."

Insert long solemn silent van ride as our team, loads Joseph's body in the van and proceeds to get clear and clean so we can talk.

Now that we can finally talk, I tell the others that Nassan did have the book, but not when I said that he didn't (timing is everything), and that that was Altzis. As we had agreed to recover the book for him, he owed us now.

"So?"

"Don't you remember what they offered us? The book supposedly dealt with the Cauldron of Dagda... the black cauldron. We could use it ONCE to bring someone back. Once..."

And so that's what we did... and anybody that thinks that this won't bite us in the ass down the road is naive at best.

Great session.

I'll let others fill in the details I missed.

 

[J'quan]

...

and so there I was, a week later, sitting a table in Club Apocalypse, watching the jazz act, and meeting with one of the purveyors (not sure who he is.) I'm welcomed back, and told my teammates are on their way back from the Bahamas. He slides me the flight info, some cash, and I'm on my way.

I would really like to fill in the week I'm missing. My memories consist of:

PAIN!

more PAIN!

Darkness...

...

Waking up at the club.

I'm told a week is missing. I feel fine, though. A little hungry at times... i think.

 

[Sialia]

Ok, if you’re confused by the names being thrown around above, it’s ok.

You are not alone.

See, we’ve all got real names, and character names, and most of our characters also have agent names, and then there’s our ENWorld sigs.

So, just to help untangle some of this, here’s the cheat sheet (I’ll spare you one and leave off our real names, which don’t matter in this case):

Enworld Sig = Character Name = Agent Name

Sialia =Miranda Soldierson = (Friendly, no agent name, but has two dba’s, Mark (M) and Madison (F), since she’s wanted for unknown reasons by unknown parties for unknown purposes. It's a safe bet Miranda Soldierson isn't her real name either.)

Swack Iron = Alex = Agent Troy (DG Agent)

Unseelie = JC Denton = Agent Tyler (DG Agent)

J'quan = Joseph = Agent Theodore (DG Agent)

Nassan was the name of the head uber-Ghoul.

Raptor Leader was the codename of the Head NRO guy.

Why we were in things so deep we had to get the NRO boys to help us out is another story, and I can’t quite tell you that one yet, because apparently, we didn't need to know all of it.

Whatever it is, we're in it deeper now.

 

[mythago]

I want to do the story hour for this game, honest, but I'm trying to figure out where the hell to start. With the "gathering the party" adventure? The Devil's Locomotive? The characters' backstories?

So many SAN points, so little time.